Racism and Deadly Viper

I am so far behind on my blog reading — remind me not to teach two online courses at the same time! — that I’ve been completely unaware of the difficult discussion brewing around Zondervan’s publication of leadership materials (their Deadly Viper series) that contain — particularly in their marketing and image use — Asian stereotypes. A HUGE hat tip to Kyle for getting me connected to the discussion, one piece of which can be found at Professor Rah’s blog. I can’t say enough about the honesty and courage these bloggers are demonstrating by critiquing Zondervan — and I can’t reiterate often enough how painful it is to see Zondervan refusing to change what they’re doing.

Perhaps a good place to start is with Soong-Cha Rah's letter to Zondervan, then follow the discussion at his blog, and at NextGenerAsian, and then at SkyeBox and at Eugene Cho's blog.

These are issues we ALL need to care about, and blogs are one way to begin to become aware of them.